A new report by In-Stat suggests global cable telephony revenue will nearly doubled by 2009 to $10-billion from $5.6-billion in 2005 - a forecast that comes as no surprise given the growing inroads made by Time-Warner and Cablevision in the U.S. and Videotron and Shaw in Canada. In-Stat analyst Michael Paxton said the advantage cablecos have over carriers is their lower costs. "Based on our analysis, it costs between 17% to 25% less to provision a VoIP cable telephony subscriber than a traditional circuit-switched cable telephony subscriber", he said.
You can bet the carriers such as Verizon, SBC and BellSouth will quickly amend their arguments on net neutrality to include this In-Stat forecasts. This is more evidence, they'll argue, that their core local phone businesses are under siege so they need new ways to generate revenue to remain competitive.